Us history majors believe this to be true..........

"Yet again, ignorance of history causes us to disparage the present."
-George Will, as excerpted from here

Fifty years ago.............................

Dean and Jean.............................Tra La La La Suzy

Anarchy in action.......................

This is what happens when people are left to their own devices.

Thanks Glenn

A most productive morning's work.......

Peter Sellers at his finest:  "We do not, and cannot, accept the principle that incompetence justifies dismissal. That is victimization."




Thanks Patrick

When words lose their meaning..........................

via

A little night time music.........................

The Allman Brothers.............In Memory of Elizabeth Reed

Sooner or later...............................

Thunderclap Newman...........................Something In The Air

no unsacred spaces...............

     How To Be A Poet
     (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down.  Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill - more of each
than you have - inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity.  Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly.  Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back the the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

-Wendell Berry

This one comes under the heading: All parents wound their children.....

via

While out driving one day................

Lunch was scheduled for noon.  Our tee  time was 1:00.  Arrived way early.  Noddled around the neighborhood for a while and  then happened upon this jewel.  After being heartily greeted upon entering, they handed me a map of the place and said, "We'll see you in two hours."  Only had a half hour, but to do it right would have taken a minimum of two hours. The map was necessary. Four floors, books everywhere, some 300,000 of them. Only bought two. It is a little slice of heaven.  If you are ever close to West Chester, PA., do yourself a favor..................

Fifty years ago.................................

Neil Sedaka....................................Bad Girl

Some things beautiful...........................

The bay, from 99th Street in Stone Harbor, N.J.   Yesterday, 7:04 am

The ocean, from 99th Street in Stone Harbor, N.J.  Yesterday, 7:09am

Opening paragraphs.........................

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, the fifteenth of the seventeen children of Josiah Franklin, and the eighth child of his father's second wife, Abiah Folger.   The Franklins lived on Milk Street, across from the South Church, where Josiah was a leading member of the congregation.  Ben was carried across the street and baptized there on the day of his birth.  The Franklins also ran a soap - and candle - making business, and Josiah was also active in the community; he had served as a constable of the town watch and also in the public markets, neighbors sometimes came to him for advice, and the son would recall that his father's "great Excellence lay in a sound Understanding and solid Judgment in prudential Matters, both in private and publick Affairs."
-Philip Dray,  Stealing God's Thunder:  Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Road and the Invention of America

Rules.....................................

From the wide, wide world of Goldman Sachs (?) comes this unofficial guide to being a man.  Conclusion is here:
Remember, “rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” 

Ah, technology..................................

Head high.........................................

Argent.................................................Hold Your Head Up

Opening paragraphs........................

     The land slips easterly from the High Plains and south from the Kansas line, toward the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, the softly eroded hills of this geologic red-bed country cut by pecan-lined creeks and shallow washes flowing into the Deep Fork and Canadian Rivers.  In the rolling fields, the corn and cotton struggle from the spare topsoil, a rich loam once, but now worn thing by spring rains and autumn winds howling from the north and west.
-Ed Cray,  Ramblin' Man:  The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

On Woody.........................

     "Woody Guthrie was, is, America's balladeer.  During the epoch of our greatest despair, the Great Depression, his were the songs that lifted the lowly spirits of the 'ordinary,' the millions of the dispossessed.  They may have lacked for bread, but he offered them something else:  self esteem, hope, and a laugh or two along the way.  Who was this bard?"

     "Dust bowl songs, hobo songs, children's songs, work songs, loafing songs, union songs, river songs, lonesome turtledove songs; songs infinite in their variety, celebrating the wonder of man.  For what is man to Woody? 'Just a hoping machine, a working machine.  The human race will sing this way as long as there is a human race.  The human race is a pretty old place.'"

-Studs Terkel, as excerpted from his Foreward to Ramblin' Man

Roamed and rambled.........................

Woody Guthrie.........................This Land Is Your Land

Woody Guthrie.........................

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.” 

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” 

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.” 

"Love is the only God that I'll ever believe in."

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.”

"I cannot help but learn the most from you who count the least.  But I feel my best with you who need me the most.  I never did exactly know why this is, but that's just the way we're built."